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A breath of fresh air (and words)

Remember this symbol?

I certainly do.Â In fact, I remember making sure that rap albums I purchased had this sticker.Â You don’t want to be the guy with the new Above the Rim soundtrack – censored edition.Â Actually I was the guy with that album, and I didn’t know it for years.Â I memorized the lyrics to “regulate” by Warren G and Nate Dogg, but it turns out they weren’t the same lyrics everyone else was memorizing.Â After that, I didn’t want to be shamed because I got the lame album instead of the hardcore one.Â Well, I think my times have changed.

I got a hold of Lupe Fiasco‘s newest album The Cool.Â I have to say I like his sound, and admire his creativity and lyrics because they are just as Jay-Z said: a breath of fresh air.Â It probably took me two listens through the album (or at least the good songs) for me to realize one major thing: he doesn’t curse.Â Then I started thinking of other artists that don’t curse and could only come up with a short list, that I’m not even sure of.

1.Â Lupe

2.Â Common

3.Â The Beastie Boys

4.Â Will Smith*

5.Â Weird Al

6.Â Chamillionaire

I’m pretty sure Common and the Beastie boys don’t swear too often, and Lupe and Chamillionaire only say niggaz once and a while.Â Weird Al only has a few rap songs, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t swear at all either.Â Popular opinion is that Will Smith doesn’t swear, and he doesn’t in any of his newer songs, but I know for a fact that he did in his song “you saw my blinker” .Â That was one of the ones that I memorized the words to the dirty version.

Anyone I missed?Â Am I wrong?Â What do you think?

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2 thoughts on “A breath of fresh air (and words)”

Both Common and the Beastie Boys swear – enough for an advisory warning on Common’s Be and Finding Forever…but compared to others, you’re right: not too much. At least for Common (who used to swear&embrace gangster rap more than he does now), he focuses energy on lyrics rather than filler curse words. Beasties also have had advisory warnings, esp in 90s when Q-Tip was helping them out, but they keep it to a low too.
De La Sol used to never swear, now they do it all the time…maybe creativity was at a low. Barry Manilow never swears…As for Will Smith, he told the world he’d never swear a while back, but it sounds like that changed – what an a$$hole.